Facebook friendships can be complicated enough, but navigating the social network waters while trying to date someone — how many dates until you're friends? Can you defriend? Do you friend their friends? — can be brutal. So we've done some highly scientific research to assemble the most important rules of Facebook when it comes to dating.

Do choose your profile information wisely. Remember that potential dates can actually see the tidbits you choose to share with the online universe. `Marathon running' is one of your `interests?' Now he knows you're a rock star. `Eating entire bags of Sun Chips whilst watching The Notebook is one of your `activities?' Maybe not (or not yet). As for photos, feel free to untag unflattering party pics from freshman year of college. You can always tell him about your trip to Ibiza after a few more dates.

Don't use Facebook as an online rooftop from which to shout about your cosmic connection. Finding The One is indeed grand, but if you want to tell him you love him, no need to advertise it to all 926 of your friends via long-winded status update. ("A year ago today I met my amazing honeybear. He blew me away with this one move...") What's romantic to you might be sickeningly saccharine or just plain TMI to your long-lost friends, cousins and former high school dance teammates. When it comes to real matters of the heart, it's best to sign off and state your feelings face-to-face.

Don't rush your relationship on Facebook. Mobile uploading and tagging pictures under the dinner table on your first date is a good way to freak someone out. Rushing to define your relationship status on `The Book' with a hyperlink and a glaring "in a relationship with" badge would also qualify as a little overzealous (or really overzealous, depending on whom you ask). Enjoy the honeymoon phase; leave Facebook for later.

Do observe the separation of Facebook and Real Life. Dates should be organized on the telephone, not via FB message. (For the record, mass party invitations don't count.) Don't hide behind those comforting blue-and-white toolbars. Pick up the phone — or at the very least send a text message.

Don't bash your ex with a thinly veiled status update. When a scorned Facebooker pastes the lyrics to Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" or worse, Aretha's "I Will Survive," on her page, everyone knows who's being referenced.